Trippilarrin Cornelius Shortmen XV
Trippilarrin Cornelius Shortmen XV was a halfling wizard that served as quartermaster aboard Captain Az Realta's ship and as part of the Waterside Company. Early Life Born in the Halflands village of Heystone in LN710 to Edregar Fastorin Shortmen XXIII and Rosa the Finder, Trippilarrin was named for the tradition of his father’s family, the Shortmen, to bear the name of their great ancestors following the death of the fourteenth member of their family to bear that name. Raised in a village of halflings in the northern border with Telinor, the young man grew up surrounded by books and stories shared around the cosy fireplace with family, and though these tales were usually told to teach or warn the young children about the dangers of other parts of the world, to leave the fighting to the brave men of Hoffendale or to avoid the briar patches that marked the territories of the elven druids, Tripp heard these stories and dreamed of what lay beyond their tiny town. As though Tripp lived among the stoutfolk, those halflings that enjoy settling down and living a peaceful life, he, like his mother, was a lightfoot, a people of travel and exploration. He desired to wander, to always look over the next hill, leading his friends Sylbeth Mulilda XIV and Waltmen Parry Whitecrisp VIII on adventures to Pintmeadow where they took turns playing the brave heroes of Reute’s War. Unusually among his friends, he was an only child, so sought the company of others his age around the village or spent hours delving into books alone, traveling in his mind to far off lands. Rosa the Finder His mother too had the desire to travel, it was that very thing that had brought her to Heystone in the first place, where she met Edregar. She was seeking to compile a list of all the halfling settlements in Etan, and maybe even the world, and had been traveling up through the Halflands when she encountered the town where she would linger far longer than she intended. Heystone was the typical halfling settlement, in fact it was so typical that Rosa considered using it in the opening chapters of her travelogue to describe what a stoutfolk halfling community looks like. It was during this time of fact gathering that she met Edregar, a local story teller’s apprentice, who claimed to be the descendant of the oldest family to have lived in Heystone (though Pentatin Baltos Heyfoder XXIX would beg to differ), offering to show her around the town and introduce her to all its inhabitants. A year later they were married, and soon after that Tripp was born, and so Rosa the Finder stayed in one place for the longest she ever had as she raised her son. A few weeks after his tenth birthday, at the epoch of the Dawn of Exarchs, Rosa announced she was going to continue her book and travel into the forest of Telinor to explore its depths for signs of native halflings. For five years she travelled the forests, sending messages back, sometimes written and other times she made use of the mages in the capital city who were willing to use the sending spell to commune with her loved ones back home, as well as sending on drafts of her book which Edregar retold in tales of adventure and mystery to his son. On his fifteenth birthday, Rosa returned, bringing grand stories of the adventure she had had in the forests, of evidence of owl riding halfling that had fled to the Warring Woods long ago. She also gifted Tripp with books, including a spell book she was given by an elven wizard in the College of Telinor, Win’ya Sarduun, an apprentice of the Cultural Considerations sub-school of the Divination School, whom she traveled with for sometime. The Taste of Magic With his spellbook and stories of adventure in the forests, Tripp began to to dream of becoming a powerful wizard like Win’ya and began practicing the cantrips within. He shared his plans with his family, who encouraged him, though Tripp discovered that his father feared being alone without his wife or his son. Tripp decided to stay with his family as his mother wrote her book and his father told stories in the town. A few years later, came the War in the Silence. The unease and uncertainty that permeated that time led to doubts about where was safe from this strange power rising in the south. And whilst the Halflands did not suffer the great loses in that conflict that others did, the fear of missing an opportunity resolved Tripp to announce his intention to enroll in the College of Telinor, and though it was with a heavy heart Edregar said goodbye to his wife and son, Rosa intending to journey to the College with Tripp to ensure his enrollment and then to carry on east towards the Warring Wood to find the lost communities of halflings that supposedly dwelt there. Education Successful in his application, Tripp began to study the arcane in Telinor, learning the mysteries of magic and its esoteric arts. As he was only a student of the first sphere of arcane magicks, he was not yet committed to a particular school, though he had his heart set on the School of Divination, and he learned a myriad of studies; Ritualism, Dueling, Arcane Theory, History of Magic, Item Enhancement, and the Rudimentaries of Alchemy. He had begun to study the lesser arts of divination such as arithmancy, astronomy, and tarot reading, entering the School of Divination as an apprentice. It was during this time he began work on his proposed theory that gnomes do not exist. He posits, that gnomes as a species are in fact a complex and highly convincing collection of cleverly woven spells that fabricate a near perfect simulation of a living creature. Any encounter with a gnome is actually an assault upon one’s senses and mental defences to cunningly convince the viewer that they are in fact seeing a real creature, when in fact they were utilising advance enchantments and illusions to modify the memory of the viewer in real time. When questioned on a number of flaws with the theory, Tripp pointed to the use of the modify memory spell, or the ability of others to create illusions able to move, speak, produce odours, and combining such abilities with spells to simulate the texture of objects, his supervisor, Archmage Thir’duul, conceded that it was possible that such advance magic was being undertaken and at the very least this line of study could lead to avenues of detecting false arcane auras. And so Tripp began his work, beginning with his attempt to prove that you can prove that something exists in the first place, his experimentation ranging from observation, reflex tests, exposure to arcane stimuli, and water displacement. Returning Home He was in the middle of attempting to completed his Second Sphere examinations of arcane studies when the Rise of Tiamat occurred. As he was of a lower Sphere, he was not chosen to join the expedition of the College to join Ba’win alongside the Noble Alliance, remaining in Telinor to study his chosen subject. When the Queen of Dragons did emerge and the Noble Alliance fractured, Ba’win’s return saw the College further fortified and much of its teaching staff turned into militia. Tripp found there was not much room to learn in the College and after speaking with his supervisor, decided to leave the forest to see if he could help the world still reeling from the arrival of a god. He returned to the Halflands and found the town of Heystone had become a garrison town for the Hoffendale forces, he saw evidence of raids and attacks by cultists in the surrounding countryside, attempts to lure the defenders out to investigate and ambush them. His father had turned his spare rooms, including Tripp’s own, over to the men from Hoffendale, and Tripp learned that his mother had returned from the Warring Woods having sighted the palehand halflings dwelling in its shadowy depths, and had departed soon after the garrison arrived to make contact with them as soon as possible. Looking through the stories of his mother, surrounded by tallfolk in a town that had been idealised in his memories that now seemed forever changed, Tripp read of the halflings that live among the human towns around Etan. He read of the stoutfolk in Schwarzmeer’s southern district that his mother described as living wretched lives hauling filth from the lake, though his father claimed that his mother did not stay too long in that place as it was not to her liking so perhaps her perception was only surface level. Off to Adventure Tripp decided once more that he was going to leave his home to travel and learn, with his worried father’s blessing, he set off with his books including an early draft of his mother’s work, one of his mother’s daggers, his wand, and his First Sphere robes to travel the roads his mother took to get to Heystone long ago. On the roads he encountered Druza, a tribesman from the north driven by visions Tripp suspects were induced by powerful hallucinogenic and non-replicatible magic. Still, the man’s story implies the possibility of a low level prophecy involving himself and others which would be fascinating to record the accuracy of. As Tripp and this strange man traveled, with the young halfling regaling him with tales his father Edregar told him they visited the occasional halfling settlement, Tripp enquiring with the inhabitants about some of the facts or tidbits of information his mother Rosa had collected. After much travel the two men arrived in southern Schwarzmeer where they found a pub called the Overflowing Pail, inside they found a grim interior that was in the process of being livened up by a minstrel who was telling tales from his homeland, of the loves and losses of fey creatures which fascinated Tripp immediately. Sitting and listening to the bard tell his tales all night, Tripp had forgotten to take any notes on the stories, and it seems the good man has remembered them all off by heart rather than having them at hand to read off. Deciding to try and follow the man and see if he would tell the stories again, he resolved to introduce himself and try and become the good fellow’s friend, which worked out great. Luchtaine and Tripp became fast friends with their love of stories and good company. Blackhand’s Eye It was during the first night of Luchtaine having a now studiously listening audience in the form of Tripp that the call for volunteers for the raid on the cultist hideout came around the new pup they were in. Men swore oaths of vengeance as they drained the last of their pint glasses, warriors picked up old swords that hung on the walls and all were swept up in a wave of justifiable rage. Luchtaine heard these cries for retribution and took up the call, soon leading a small band of the pup’s patrons to back their words muttered over the tops of their lagers with action, with Tripp and Druza following along, Tripp eagerly informing Druza, and occasionally filling in Luchtaine, on the recent history of the dragon cult scourge. With a song Luchtaine referred to as a “rebel tune” echoing down the streets, though Tripp knew not what rebellion it was penned in, the small mob joined those that would attack the warehouse where the cult had been hiding out within the city. With a sound strategy being formulated by Blackhand Byron, the attack was launched on the warehouse and the fortified buildings around it. Soon after the raid started, Tripp lost track of Druza and Luchtaine, finding himself pushed forward surrounded by tallfolk all screaming and shouting. He heard what sounded like a bear bashing around and the sounds of discordant music trying to be heard over the banging of hammers against doors. Armed with his wand and dagger, Tripp was not afraid, though he could hear the stories his father would tell him of halflings getting into fights and so he tried to follow the advice he knew his father would give which would be to find a safe spot to cast into the growing melee. Ducking low behind a group of shouting warriors, he spotted a figure burping out clouds of poisonous gas that were stopping Byron and her men from entering the main warehouse further, cutting off others. The creature was a bullywug, and it belched out that it had learned from the great Pharblex Spattergoo, some powerful cult leader no doubt. Rushing forward, Tripp hurled a bolt of lighting at the creature, tethering the energy to his wand that he pulsed repeatedly into the disgusting bullywug, giving Byron and her forces enough time to enter the building unheeded by the poisonous cloud. With a sickening squelch, the bullywug’s eyes burst from the surging electric shock, Tripp retreating back to where he heard the music of Luchtaine. Along the way he managed to dispatch a cultist throwing burning oil down on those attempting to break down the door, knocking the man out with a few quick bursts of magic missile, though he quickly moved on when a half-orc came barreling down the street with a battering ram. He found the foreign bard close to where they had launched the attack, the Vilnian avoiding the slings and arrows of the cultists and their kobold allies. After some time, as Tripp wasn’t sure how long he’d been there, darting in and out of the melee to lend an occasional burst of arcane energy to those foes hidden behind barricades before retreating back to gather himself again, a cheer rose up among Byron’s mob that the last of them had surrendered. Still feeling the rush of battle, Tripp excitedly exclaimed that they had done it and they were heroes like King Hoff the Faultless or Lucius Hightower. Category:Characters Category:Halfling